Jalen Brunson Simply Has To Be Better

I know, you probably clicked on this in anger. How dare he single out Jalen Brunson for his Game 3 performance! He had 32 points! Karl-Anthony Towns only took 10 shots! Mikal Bridges only scored two points! Landry Shamet was 1-for-8 and was a -20! Mike Brown buried Miles McBride on the bench for some reason!

All of these things are true, including the McBride thing. He only played 8:39 last night, which was 10 minutes fewer than in Games 1 and 2, and his lowest total in a playoff game since 2023, when he was in his second season and not really part of the rotation yet. And yet, Jalen Brunson simply has to be better.

You are reading a newsletter/blog called Green Tint, so of course I am immediately going to think of the Celtics parallel. And there is a very clear parallel here to Jayson Tatum's performance in the first three games of the 2024 NBA Finals. Much like how the media fell all over themselves praising Jaylen Brown after the first two games in Boston that year, the media fell all over themselves praising KAT after Games 1 and 2 in San Antonio. I did too! KAT has been awesome. The media was less kind to Tatum and his shooting woes than they have been to Brunson. No one is really taking shots at Brunson. Nor should they. Brunson has been fine. Not good, or great. But fine. That's what a .370 FG% is. But Tatum was doing everything he could on the boards and as a distributor – he became just the 14th player ever to have multiple 12+ assist-games in the NBA Finals in Boston's Game 2 win. Brunson, uh, isn't doing that.

Right now, Brunson is not leading his team in assists like he normally would be. Josh Hart has more assists through three games, and Bridges is in the neighborhood. Crucially, Brunson is also leading the NBA Finals in turnovers, with 13. For all the smoke blowing about Stephon Castle's sometimes immature mistakes, he has but eight turnovers. James Harden was raked over the coals by the media during the Conference Finals for his poor assist-to-turnover ratio. In two of the three games this series, Brunson has a neutral or negative ratio, as he had two assists and six turnovers in Game 1 and fives assists and five turnovers last night. And his six assists and four turnovers in Game 2 aren't exactly inspiring any John Stockton comparisons.

No one is really expecting Brunson to all of a sudden step up as a rebounder. His 4.3 rebounds per game right now are pretty good for him – best round in these playoffs, and sixth-best of his 15 playoff series' – but obviously that's nothing special.

Brunson took one charge last night, but unless we think Stephon Castle's dad is Luke Cage, Brunson exaggerated it a little, and in doing so nearly hurt himself. He picked up five steals in Game 2, which was huge, but he came up empty in Games 1 and 3, and with the way the Spurs can pick on him defensively, he needs to be more of a pest so that the Spurs don't feel compelled to pick on him. Certainly, he has not been the factor defensively that KAT has been. Even last night when Wemby scored 32 points, KAT kept him from going for more, on multiple occasions knocking the ball out of Wemby's hands as he was preparing to shoot, disrupting his rhythm, and forcing him to pass.

Maybe you still think this is a little harsh. After all, Brunson was 4-for-7 in the fourth quarter last night, and had 12 of New York's 20 points in the final frame. But I've seen enough Brunson Takeovers to know that last night was not that. One play really stuck out to me. When Brunson re-entered the game with 9:18 left, the Knicks were down five, and were once again losing ground. They had lost their tenuous grasp of the lead with 7:26 left in the third quarter, and it was a see saw battle from there, but the Spurs were beginning to sit down on that see saw, as it were, and tilt the game toward them. They had regained the lead at the end of the third, and expanded the lead in the early minutes of the fourth while Brunson sat.

With 8:10 left in the game, Victor Wembanyama hit two free throws to give San Antonio its second seven-point lead of the quarter, which was its largest of the second half to that point. Brunson got the ball where he likes it, and was able to drive into the lane. Mitchell Robinson did his job and sealed off Wemby, giving Brunson as clear a path to the bucket as possible. And then Brunson kicked it to the corner for a Josh Hart three. Josh Hart missed that three. Take another look at Brunson at the moment he passed it:

Wemby is sealed. Julian Champagnie is not challenging. Castle is, but he's behind the play. He isn't going to be able to get to the ball without going through Brunson's head. Is Josh Hart wide open? He sure is. Is a Brunson lay-up going to be the higher percentage shot? The one he would take if he was really cooking? It absolutely is.

Brunson would shoot 4-for-6 from the field and 3-for-3 at the line the rest of the way, which obviously isn't terrible. But again, the Knicks needed more. The rest of the Knicks shot 2-for-12 from the field and 1-for-2 at the line the rest of the way. One of those two made buckets was the semi-desperation three OG Anunoby hit in the corner with nine seconds left. The Knicks needed Brunson to take over because no one else had it going at all, and he didn't do that.

I think the number we're shooting here is 35+ points. Starting with the second round series vs. Miami in 2023, Brunson has had at least one 35+ point game in nine consecutive playoff series' heading into this one. In five of the nine, he had at least two such games, with his consecutive 39, 47, 40, and 41-point games to close out the 2024 first round series against the Sixers being the incredible pinnacle.

If Brunson had gotten to 35 or more in Game 3, the Knicks probably have a 3-0 lead right now. But the Spurs defenders are bothering him juuuuust enough that he hasn't gone into takeover mode, and in Game 3, his gravity wasn't helpful enough to the Knicks' shooters. For sure, the supporting players need to hit their shots, but sometimes the leaders need to step up and do more.

The Knicks are a great and fun team to watch, and these first three games have been super duper entertaining. They're so good in fact that they survived to win two road games in which their best player shot a combined 19-for-56 (.339 FG%) from the field. But last night made it clear that they can't sustain that over seven games. They need Jalen Brunson to be better. If it's not shooting, then he needs to really be facilitating, like he did with his 14 assists vs. Cleveland in Game 2. The good news? I do fully expect him to be in Takeover Mode in Game 4, and for the Knicks to head back to San Antonio needing to win just one time in three tries to secure their first NBA championship in 53 years.